


when you're standing at the guillotine and you can't see the blade (but you know it's going to fall)

by MourningPluto



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Humanstuck, M/M, Relationship Problems, Suicide mention, falling in love but backwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 11:58:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MourningPluto/pseuds/MourningPluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And I lay there wondering<br/>What is the matter<br/>Is it a matter of worse or of better?<br/>You walk right past me and straighten the covers<br/>But I would still love you if you wanted a lover."</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you're standing at the guillotine and you can't see the blade (but you know it's going to fall)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [To Hurt A Soul](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185934) by [isangelical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isangelical/pseuds/isangelical). 



> i gave eridan BPI (bipolar disorder I) in this fic because it's based off an AU i have, and if you can suspend your disbelief that far then you can probably read this fic

When Eridan was younger – twelve years old, maybe, studying the French Revolution out of boredom – he used to wonder what it was like to be Marie Antoinette. He knew that she didn't really say “let them eat cake”, and he knew that she was royalty, also, and he knew that she wasn't really as bad as the movies and books made her seem. She was sympathetic towards the peasant class, or at least as sympathetic as anyone in French royalty could be, and so he wondered what it felt like to know she was going to be executed so far in advance. She got a last meal, probably, and then the next day she walked to the guillotine where she knew everything was going to end. Her last words were to the executioner; she tripped on his foot. And so Eridan used to wonder what that felt like, knowing the blade was going to come down but not being able to control when or for that matter why.

He doesn't really wonder, anymore. 

He's always kind of swung between red-for-raging blue-for-bleak; he doesn't know why, he just has. Then he went to a doctor and well shit, there's a name for that and they call it Bipolar Disorder I. It's no comfort; it's just sort of there, like if you spill tea on a tablecloth and then the stain doesn't ever totally come out. He'd thought as a kid that maybe things would make more sense if he knew why he was...well, the way he was. But then, he'd thought a lot of abominably stupid shit as a kid. 

It's been three years since he's been officially diagnosed and nothing makes any more sense than it used to. The only difference is he knows those nights where he wants to punch his pillow until the stuffing comes out, when he wants to carve into the walls, when he wants to run out of the apartment and onto the street and scream bloody murder, or fuck a stranger, or get the hell out – he knows those nights are called hypomanic and apparently they aren't supposed to be better than the opposite nights when he just wants everyone to get the hell away from him so he can die in solitude. Although, really, they are. Being hypomanic is like someone's set him on fire, but it's better than the alternative, where he could stick his hand over a flame and feel absolutely nothing. 

(But really – honestly and truthfully – neither of them are better because they are both symptoms of a disease which has done nothing but drive a wedge between him and anyone unfortunate enough to meet him.)

It's like he can feel him pulling away. When he was in high school, the HOSA club handed out these fliers at lunch that had Suicide Awareness printed at the top in bold letters, and there was a bulleted list below that showed signs of someone ready to off themseleves. The list had things like 

Withdrawal from family or friends  
Increased alcohol/drug use  
Making wills  
Giving away personal belongings  
Self-injury

and so on, so fucking forth. He wonders if he's just imagining these kinds of signs in Sollux, who would never kill himself (anymore), but might all the same find reason to pack up and get the fuck out of dodge. He wonders if he's hallucinating the TV dinners eaten in silence with How I Met Your Mother playing idly in the background, and if it truly counts as 'withdrawal'. He wonders if he's made up the direct increase of booze intake, from both of them, and he wonders if he's crazy for envisioning Sollux giving away pieces of their life together. Would anyone on Craiglist be interested in a painting, a poster, a lamp, a box, a shoe, a toothbrush? (Probably. It's Craigslist.)

Torpor runs through his veins, black and sticky and clinging to his bones; he gets up, which is a real goddamn achievement, and he pours himself some Rice Chex because apparently he hasn't eaten in a day or two. How'd that happen? Maybe he's literally losing his mind. Maybe he needs Life Alert. 

That's the kind of joke Sollux might laugh at if Eridan had bothered to say it out loud, or if he were up yet, or if it were two years ago. It's a strange thought and Eridan thinks if he were ass-backwards drunk the thought alone would be enough to sober him up. 

He has headphones in. Amanda Palmer croons softly about her schizophrenic friend who should really leave this shitty guy who makes her cry all the time and doesn't love her the way he should. Of course, there are Delilahs everywhere, unrescuable as all hell, and if Eridan were a schizo himself he might be inclined to put himself in that category. 

(Sollux, of course, isn't the bad guy here. He's someone who got involved with someone objectively fucking insane. Eridan remembers seeing an advertisement for a movie where one of the characters said “hey man, don't stick your dick in crazy!” Everyone else in the trailer laughed. He laughs too, low and soft under his breath.) 

He has three spoonfuls without tasting them. 

It's been a while since he's painted, and seeing as how that's his main source of income, it seems as if he should probably get to work on that. In point of fact, it's been a while since he's done anything, and that thought isn't pleasant at all because it might be a little easier to put up with him if he fucking did something once in a while. Left the house, maybe. Worked on a screenplay. Took up a hobby. 

_Maybe I'll go somewhere on my next upper,_ he thinks. Is it awful that he thinks of uppers as little vacations from the downers, excuses to act out? The worst thing he's ever done on an upper was probably scream at that waiter, or sneak out in the rain that one time. He needs new medication, and yet, somehow he feels like the medicine isn't what's causing the problems here. 

He is the problem, really. Which sucks, but there you go. 

Eridan stares at the paintbrush for a few minutes, standing and shifting uncomfortably in front of his easel, which he hasn't touched in fuckall forever. What would he even paint? Is there a way to capture apathy, or falling out of love, or emptiness? How do you paint those particular monsters? He guesses he might fall someone falling down a flight of stairs, which is a vaguely satisfying thought, but painting the shadows on each stair would be kind of a bitch and he's not really talented enough to pull off semi-realism. 

It's cruel, he decides, to stay with someone who you've already given over to the guillotine. It's cruel and unusual punishment. It's sick. In the other room, a pair of ambidextrous hands pull on a rope which releases a blade, which severs something, but it isn't his neck, because no one's that lucky. 

He takes out his headphones because the same song's been on repeat for a half-hour, maybe longer. It's hard to keep track, although really, who would want to? 

Was it like flipping a switch for him? Did he just wake up and not feel it anymore? Or was it slower? Falling in love had been scary and exciting and not near fast enough; it had taken years. Is this the beginning of a backwards process? It had taken him months to say the first three words, I love you – will it take him months to say the last three words, I'm leaving you? It doesn't matter. Just thinking about it makes Eridan feel sort of sick to his stomach. (He never gets used to it. He should, but he doesn't.) 

The guillotine's blade has yet to fall. Still and all, Eridan wants to give away everything, the way suicidal people do. Not that he's suicidal (anymore), but there are memories painted in the walls and stitched into the couch cushions. One morning at 1:00 he went to the kitchen to stare vacantly at the fridge for a few minutes, and on the way there he realized that the fridge hadn't come with the place, they'd gotten this one together, and it was in fact one of the first Official Couple Things they'd done at all. 

He sat on the floor and cried for absolutely no reason. Either he was incredibly quiet, or incredibly ignored. He's not sure which he prefers. (No, wait, he is sure. He would prefer not to be crying at all.) 

But it's whatever. That's his catch phrase now. He's confided in Vriska, who is a blabbermouth but has the added benefit of not being Sollux's friend, and nearly everything he's said to her has concluded with “it's whatever”. She says do you think he'll dump you and he says I dunno, it's whatever. She says maybe there's someone else and he says you think? Oh well, it's whatever. She says aren't you completely in love with him and he says yeah, a little bit, but it's whatever. He doesn't even know what that's supposed to mean and it's kind of ridiculous how he uses that as a crutch, but – fuck it, it's whatever. 

Really what he wants is to stand on a chair and loop a noose of indifference around a light fixture. He wants to kick the chair and swing from detachment. He wants to hang himself with whatevers. 

Wow, that's original. 

(That's trite as fuck. But it's how he feels.) 

After figuring it out – sometime between the failed Olive Garden date and the most recent time they tried having sex, which was strictly speaking successful but an emotional failure – he wanted to fall out of love back, because god damn it two can play at that game. And he tried. He tried hard. He tried imagining life without Sollux, a life without energy drinks fucking everywhere and anal-retentive video game organizing, only he couldn't. Isn't that sad? Probably the saddest part of the whole arrangement. Codependency is sad enough, but dependency is worse, it's damn fuckin' sad. It's mournful. It makes you want to write a novel full of lowercase and italicized poetry. Sad. 

He doesn't do that. He just stands in front of the easel and wonders vaguely about the blade.

**Author's Note:**

> literally the story here is that andy told me "i'm writing a fic where sollux falls out of love with eridan" and not only did i bitch at her for probably two hours but it drove me to the point where i felt compelled to write something as well
> 
> there is no real good resolution here but i was proud enough of the work that i uploaded it
> 
> go read andy's story, it's sad as fucking hell


End file.
